


can you ever find a home

by Lizzen



Category: Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle (2017)
Genre: Age Difference, F/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-28
Updated: 2017-12-28
Packaged: 2019-02-22 20:57:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,630
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13175055
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lizzen/pseuds/Lizzen
Summary: The thing they don’t tell you about saving a person’s life by surrendering your own: it’s a binding contract. It means he’s yours, and you’re his. (Post-movie)





	can you ever find a home

**Author's Note:**

> So many thank yous to th_esaurus for both foreseeing and enabling this.

The thing they don’t tell you about saving a person’s life by surrendering your own: it’s a binding contract. It means he’s yours, and you’re his. 

*  
She and Alex keep in touch. Send emails and the occasional text on birthdays and holidays. She wants to visit him but it’s-- it’s not-- 

She’s worried about being clingy, about interrupting his life. Worried about being the little girl aching for the boy she fell in love with. The boy who is actually a man with a different face. 

And besides, she thinks, how well does he even know me anyway?

*  
**BW** : Stanford said yes  
**AV** : I’m so proud of you  
**AV** : I can’t find the champagne emoji  
**BW** : You’re useless  
**AV** : :)

*  
She meets Steve in her rock climbing class and she quite likes the look of his face. Very different from-- 

Just. Very different.

She particularly likes it when his face is between her legs. She particularly likes it when he lets her finger him, just a little. He’s very accomodating of her; of her needs. She likes him quite a bit.

When she writes an email about him to Alex, there’s a weird sense that she’s cheating. That she’s doing something wrong. She backspaces several times. Leaves it at: “I’m happy.” 

*  
It’s 2 am and she’s studying when her phone pings. It’s an email, and she ignores it until her phone pings again. Twice. The sound she has set up for his texts. 

**AV** : Sorry about that email. I’m just not in a good place right now

Curious, she quickly flips to gmail and opens the email with a certain greediness. He’s never, she thinks, never really open. Not ever--

She reads and it’s a ramble. He must be drunk, she thinks, reading it so quickly that she doesn’t quite understand it all, feel what he’s feeling. And then she reads a sentence and her heart nearly stops. 

“I still dream about having another face,” he says. 

And it’s followed by: “You understand me, right?”

It’s probably the late hour, the lack of dinner, the red bulls, and the fact that she’s probably going to fail tomorrow’s exam, but-- she shivers; she’s so cold in so many places. 

Her fingers fly fast and she hits send before she thinks it through: “I dream of your face too.”

Then she throws her phone in her bag.

*  
Here’s the thing: when she wakes up after having dreamt of his face, she hears drums.

*  
She’s got drunk texts of her own, though. Wakes up more than once to see a conversation she doesn’t remember having.

One in particular is saved in a screenshot in her photos. 

**BW** : Did you miss me 

The time stamp is ten minutes later:

 **AV** : What?  
**BW** : On ur long trip to 2016  
**BW** : Did u miss me, or?  
**AV** : I guessed that you were born in 2000  
**BW** : 1999  
**BW** : Answer the question  
**AV** : Yes. I missed you

He doesn’t text her back for weeks after that.

*  
Lying in bed, she thinks about him fucking her sometimes. Sometimes she thinks about fucking him. It’s an odd sort of fantasy; destabilizing as she’ll always feel the sensation of being hard when it comes to thinking about him, like that. Blood racing to the thing between her legs that doesn’t exist. 

*  
She comes home for Christmas, brings Steve. Her parents love him, and they spend hours talking around the firepit, plying him with red wine for stories about school, about himself, about her.

Her phone is in her lap, and it rings. ALEX VREEKE it says and she immediately excuses herself. Heads to her old room while saying: “What’s up, doc?” 

“Merry Christmas,” Alex says, and she’s shook, again, by the strange tenor of his voice. Not what she remembers at all. 

“You too. What’s up?” she replies.

He clears his throat. “I wondered if we could get coffee.”

She’s made it to the kitchen, and she leans her hand heavily against the island. “Of course,” she responds as brightly as she can as something twists in her stomach. “I can call up the others too if you want a reunion--”

“I don’t really-- I don’t keep in touch with them,” he says. 

Something terrible, something buried seems to soften inside of her. And her mind immediately ticks through every outfit she brought, desperate that she has something nice. God, she thinks, why does it matter. It’s just-- “Alex--,” she says. 

“Yeah?”

“Yes. I mean, does 1:30 at The Local work for you?” And everything is awkward, the world is terrible, she wishes she were dead.

He laughs. “See you.”

“See you.” And she hits cancel call so fast. Looks at herself in the mirror and breathes out. 

*  
First, he doesn’t recognize her. She has to wave especially hard and say his name three times for him to turn his head, open his eyes a little wider, and approach her. 

Second, they aren’t quite sure about handshake or hug, and so she just goes for it, puts her arms around him and squeezes tight. Lingers for a moment.

Third, he pays despite her waving her credit card in front of the cashier. 

Fourth, his face is wrong. 

Fifth, he sits back as she talks, a half smile on his totally wrong face. The sensation grows so slow; a relaxation that slides through her muscles and sinews. She likes it, likes how he listens to her to understand, not reply. She likes him. 

Sixth, he tells her his wife is leaving him.

*  
They don’t meet in person for three more years. 

But her phone buzzes more than ever.

*  
She’s bored at Martha’s wedding reception and face times him. And is thoroughly surprised when he answers.

“You were invited,” she says. “You didn’t come.” And as she watches him open his mouth, she adds: “We could have danced.”

“I had a conference,” he says. “I’m in--”

“I don’t care, you’re not here.” she interrupts.

“Hey,” he says softly, like she’s a wild animal needing to be tamed. “I’m sorry.”

And she hits cancel. Hates herself for making the call, reminding her of what he looks like, here. In reality. 

*  
She has a thought that knocks about her headspace when she’s tired-- when she loses a bit of her careful control.

You see, if they hadn’t have destroyed the game, she could have seen him again. 

*  
Thousands of photos in her iCloud and none of them are of him, of his face. 

*  
On the flight back home from the wedding, she buys wifi so she can text him. 

**BW** : Sorry  
**BW** : I’m sorry  
**AV** : It’s ok  
**AV** : Are you ok?  
**BW** : Wishing you were flying this plane tbh  
**AV** : Really glad I’m not  
**BW** : How’s Bethany?  
**AV** : She and Andy are with their mom  
**AV** : I get photos every day, do you want to see?  
**BW** : Yeah, show me

And her heart aches. 

*  
She doesn’t notice that the frequency of his emails increase; she just notices she’s on gmail a lot more than she used to be, typing out the various and sundry of her life and hitting send. Feeling a surge of joy when she sees the bold black text that says his name at the top of her inbox. 

*  
Steve gets a job in the rainforest and she seriously, seriously considers his _reaction_ : his offer to her. It’s perfect; he’s perfect for her. And she can’t accept it. 

*  
**BW** : Finally at DFW  
**AV** : how was Machu Picchu  
**BW** : breathtaking  
**AV** : wanna talk more about it? Im in dallas  
**AV** : conference at the hilton anatole  
**BW** : no shit  
**AV** : no shit

*  
She’s ready to see his real face, recognize this, _this_ body as Alex. So, she smiles and kisses his cheek when they hug. Notices how his hand clingers on her arm. 

There’s wine, and more wine, and then Sauternes, and he’s giggling about something. 

“What?” she says, demanding and amused. She feels like a balloon filled up and ready to pop, she’s so happy.

“I want to know,” he says, “Do you miss having boners?” and he begins to giggle more, his cheeks are so pink.

She throws her head back to laugh, and laugh, and laugh until she coughs. “Nah,” she finally lands on. “I’ve formally decided that dicks are no fun.” 

And he raises his glass. “To dicks being no fun” and she clinks his glass.

*  
Outside the restaurant, she moves in to hug him and something shifts. Something changes inside of her. It’s a mix of courage, insanity, and booze, and her lips press against his. 

“I’m--” he starts and she covers his mouth with her own. The kiss surprises her because-- because he kisses back. Opens his mouth, lets her in. A softness grows in her knees so she clings a little, just a little. 

When she pulls away, she says quietly: “We’re doing this.” Her words carry some level of firm assurance. He trembles in her arms. 

“Are we?” And she knows there’s a ton of dumb excuses demanding to be voiced behind that dumb skull of his. Things about his age, that they met in a ridiculous fashion, that it’s wrong, that he can’t make her happy. 

“We’re doing this,” she echoes. “It’s just you and me,” she kinda-sorta lies, thinking of the young man she fell for, all tangled up with the man she loves.

*  
“Does it bother you,” he says, “that I seriously considered my-- um,-- my sexuality after-- after it all?” He looks so red that she chuckles low and knowingly.

“You looked at bear porn, didn’t you,” she says, leaning back with her arms crossed. 

“I looked at bear porn,” he admits. 

*  
She holds onto his face, looks him in the eyes, and doesn’t hear the sound of drums at all. 

#


End file.
